[AOLSERVER] Fatal: nsmain: invalid user 'nobody' (on OS X)

[Carl Robert Blesius]

I was going through the OpenACS install documentation and tweaking the
Unix install docs so they work for Mac OS X and I ran across the
following problem in the "test AOLServer" part of the OpenACS docs:
root# ./bin/nsd -t sample-config.tcl -u nobody -g web
[19/Feb/2004:00:35:41][1858.2684396012][-main-] Fatal: nsmain: invalid
user 'nobody'
On OS X the nobody user has a gid and uid of -2

After asking on the OpenACS irc channel someone pointed to the
following code in aolserver/nsd/nsadmin.c:
-----------------------
    /*
     * Verify the uid/gid args.
     */
    if (uarg != NULL) {
       uid = Ns_GetUid(uarg);
       gid = Ns_GetUserGid(uarg);
       if (uid < 0) {
           uid = atoi(uarg);
       }
       if (uid == 0) {
           Ns_Fatal("nsmain: invalid user '%s'", uarg);
       }
    }
    if (garg != NULL) {
       gid = Ns_GetGid(garg);
       if (gid < 0) {
           gid = atoi(garg);
           if (gid == 0) {
               Ns_Fatal("nsmain: invalid group '%s'", garg);
           }
       }
    }
------------------------
and the following code in unix.c

------------------------

 *----------------------------------------------------------------------
 * Ns_GetUserGid --
 *
 *      Get the group id for a user name
 *
 * Results:
 *      Returns group id of the user name found in /etc/passwd or -1
 *     otherwise.
 *
 * Side effects:
 *      None.
 *
 *----------------------------------------------------------------------
 */
int
Ns_GetUserGid(char *user)
{
    struct passwd  *pw;
    int             retcode;
    Ns_MutexLock(&lock);
    pw = getpwnam(user);
    if (pw == NULL) {
        retcode = -1;
    } else {
        retcode = pw->pw_gid;
    }
    Ns_MutexUnlock(&lock);
    return retcode;
}
/*
 *----------------------------------------------------------------------
 * Ns_GetUid --
 *
 *      Get user id for a user name.
 *
 * Results:
 *      Return NS_TRUE if user name is found in /etc/passwd file and
 *     NS_FALSE otherwise.
 *
 * Side effects:
 *      None.
 *
 *----------------------------------------------------------------------
 */
int
Ns_GetUid(char *user)
{
    struct passwd  *pw;
    int retcode;
    Ns_MutexLock(&lock);
    pw = getpwnam(user);
    if (pw == NULL) {
        retcode = -1;
    } else {
        retcode = pw->pw_uid;
    }
    Ns_MutexUnlock(&lock);
    return retcode;
}
-------------------------

OpenACS irc diagnosis:

"so that is a bug. it should just return true instead of the uid, which
is what the comment actually says it does. it assumes all UIDs are >0"
Comments? Fixes? Help?

Versions info from the README:

    This is the AOLserver 4.0.0 source distribution.  AOLserver is
    available at http://aolserver.com, a SourceForge hosted site.
RCS: @(#) $Id: README,v 1.4 2003/01/24 18:49:23 elizthom Exp $

Although I think what I downloaded was labeled 4.0.2.

Thanks,
Carl
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